Refitting the Spitfire continues…

This is the fun part of a restoration; piece by piece, day by day the car starts to take shape. Everything has been cleaned up and all looking fresh and shiny.

Today Asa, John and Mark have all been getting stuck in to our 1971 Triumph Spitfire rebuild.

If you’d been running around for 45 years you’d too probably start to look a little tired and that’s exactly what we found under the bonnet, a tired looking engine.

Mechanically, she run’s like a dream but after a little bit of cleaning and painting in places she also looks wonderful too.

We have resprayed underneath the bonnet and arches with a very hard wearing coating. Being finished in black really finishes it off. Not only does it look great but is a useful technique to help hide any future dirty and grime that starts to build.

Today, we also resprayed the newly refurbished shocks, springs and discs. It’s the smaller detail that makes a big difference to the overall appearance. Why spend all this time and effort on a fantastic outer body and then leave the smaller visible components thinking that they are not worth doing…everything is worth doing!!

Moving on to the interior, John has been busy fitting the brand new Triumph Spitfire door cards.

Speaking from experience, if you are restoring your own classic vehicle and your door cards look perfectly fine then please do not be too hasty at deciding to keep them. We very rarely have cars come in to us with horrible door cards. Door cards are more option that not still in good working order but when you have gone to all the effort stripping, respraying and rebuilding, the door cards you thought looked perfectly fine will most probably look tired next to a freshly painted exterior.

It’s absolutely worth that extra thought…

Here we are nearing the end of the day; the brand new handles have been fitted, the rear chrome surround trim is also in place, the rear lights are looking lovely and one of the rear black strips is also in position.

Soon be time to head home, get a good night’s sleeps so we can crack on for day 3 of the rebuild. Before the team leave off for the night we refitted the original chrome bumpers and badges.

The refurbished chrome bumpers have come up like new..but the great thing is that they are all original. This was one objective that Mrs King was really hoping we could achieve, from day 1 the original bumpers were always the preferred choice over a set of new and we couldn’t have asked for a better result.